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Like business travelers themselves, corporate travel is a moving target. Change and evolution are constants for any corporate travel program. Success requires staying apprised of and adapting to current trends. This may include responding to rising costs, using artificial intelligence (AI) to your advantage, prioritizing integration, and optimizing the employee experience.

Research by SAP ÂÜÀòÊÓƵ and other industry experts provides perspective on current challenges:

• 42% of travel managers anticipated company directives to cut travel costs within the year.
• 88% of travelers reported significant travel disruptions, while 74% felt unsafe on a trip.
• 61% of businesses without integrated travel and expense solutions are likely to move to a connected system within two years.
• 34% of travel managers need better training to benefit from AI-powered tools.

They¡¯re numbers that illustrate the hopes and difficulties that travel managers, business leaders, and organizations must juggle in a time of rampant uncertainty and disruption. For example, how do businesses control costs while ensuring travelers ¨C who require safety measures and business travel booking flexibility ¨C are willing to keep taking to the road? And how do organizations invest in AI and integration while ensuring team members know how to leverage the benefits of both?

Read on for insights that can help you execute the balancing acts and move business forward. Learn:

• More about  travel trends involving cost, employee experience, AI, and integration.
• Ways ineffective travel and expense is costing your corporate travel program and business.
• How SAP ÂÜÀòÊÓƵ solutions for travel, expense, purchase requests, business mileage, and more can help your business navigate a changing travel landscape.

Employee Travel and Expense 2.0: New Realities, New Solutions

Explore best practices for employee experience, how AI and digital tools are affecting business travel, and new approaches to T&E management.

What travel trends are businesses confronting?

Rising costs rise above all other trends for corporate travel programs because they can affect everything else surrounding business travel. Increased costs tax your ability to deliver a better employee experience, while spurring adoption of AI and solution integration in pursuit of efficiency, productivity, and other benefits.

Tips for managing rising costs

It doesn¡¯t take a financial wizard to recognize cost increases can be dealt with in three ways: Reduce purchase prices, lower the cost of doing business, or a combination of the two. Vendor prices can be outside your control, so some of the best opportunities involve conserving resources so money can go toward travel you cannot afford to forgo.

With each centering on tapping the power of technology and data, consider these tips for managing travel spend amid increasingly rising costs:

• Use a travel request tool (preferably fueled by AI) to estimate trip costs, zoom in on the best deals, and help decide whether a trip is necessary.
• Automate business mileage collection to improve accuracy, hinder the employee tendency to overstate, and to give you a tool to determine whether flat fees or company cars would be better options.
• Use a technology solution to manage and increase value-added tax reclaim, bringing back the dollars the business deserves and can direct elsewhere.
• Make sure P-card purchases, corporate card spend, and every direct business travel booking is captured automatically so that you have a full picture of spending.

Making the employee experience better

Improving the employee experience isn¡¯t just a matter of keeping travelers satisfied but also of keeping travelers at all, as half of all employees are open to leaving their current employer, For employees who travel, the experience can take a toll on their work-life balance and views of the company. Scheduling shifts, longer layovers, and unplanned days on the road add up, as can the perception cost is more important to the organization than their well-being. Duty of care is certainly a factor, as 44% of travelers would refuse a trip over safety concerns.

Technology can lighten the burden, such as business travel booking tools that are easier to use, solutions that simplify travel and expense reports, and software that accurately tracks business mileage and speed mileage reimbursement. For travel managers, it¡¯s always a delicate balance between crafting policies that allow, let¡¯s say, the occasional but more expensive direct flight and controlling cost for their program. But solutions that give travelers the flexibility they want, while also giving the company the information and flexibility to adjust policies as needed, can help achieve that balance.

AI benefits for corporate travel programs

From preparing trip estimates to personalizing business travel booking to strengthening and speeding analysis of travel data, the AI infused into travel (and expense) solutions promises to deliver flexibility and efficiency for travelers and corporate travel programs. Overall, 95% of travelers are open to using AI-fueled technology for business travel booking, but virtually all those employees want help from the company to get comfortable with it (just as many travel managers want AI training, too).  Employees also have concerns about data security and potential AI bias. All findings suggest that if businesses are to reap AI¡¯s full potential, they must offer comprehensive training and use solutions from providers committed to data privacy, safety, and ethical use of AI.

One integrated platform for T&E

Integration of travel and expense solutions into a single platform creates a powerful system for sharing data, utilizing AI, and delivering the insights, efficiency, visibility, simplicity, and other advantages that make corporate travel program flexibility and cost control possible. An integrated platform gives travel managers and their organizations the ability to negotiate better rates, provide more choices and enhanced safety for travelers, and the agility to respond to the change that¡¯s always coming their way.

How ineffective T&E is costing your company

Corporate travel programs lacking automated and integrated travel and expense solutions are less equipped to contend with challenges and take advantage of opportunities.

Across multiple fronts, the real-world costs of ineffective travel and expense add up. Cost savings, efficiency, visibility, compliance, employee experience, security, and the full potential of AI are all diminished by limited automation and integration. For example:

• Incomplete data: With incomplete data and reports that must be handled manually, you lack a timely view of spending and the information and insights to negotiate better rates with suppliers.
• Approval inefficiency: Approval of travel and expense reports is difficult and time-consuming because you cannot automatically match pre-approvals to actual spending and managers must review reports twice.
• Manual expense reports: Expense reports can¡¯t write themselves because receipts, credit card, and P-card feeds don¡¯t automatically flow from one solution to another.
• Delayed compliance: Compliance occurs after the fact instead of ahead and during purchases, because your travel solution cannot flag out-of-policy spending or guide travelers to compliant choices.
• Tedious exception-making: Exceptions are manual and vexing, as out-of-policy but approved expenses such as business class or direct flights must be okayed at every step instead of automatically.
• AI limitations: AI can¡¯t attain its full potential because it can¡¯t tap all your data, learn about processes, spot patterns, and deliver insights.
• Security risks: Security and data privacy are hindered, as multiple solutions mean more points of risk. Instead of one secure sign-on for one platform, you must do your best to manage multiple risk surface areas and address security blind spots.
• Limited speed and scale: Speed, scale, and resiliency are limited as solutions can¡¯t smoothly communicate with each other, are on different development timelines, and can¡¯t easily update and adjust in unison.

Conclusion: How SAP ÂÜÀòÊÓƵ solutions help overcome challenges

The benefits of a single platform for managing travel and expense ¨C and invoices, too ¨C have become well recognized. Not long ago, 78% of decision-makers reported they¡¯d prefer a single solution for T&E.

By design, SAP ÂÜÀòÊÓƵ solutions integrate readily and provide businesses with visibility, efficiencies, and insights. Their capabilities enable them to meet travel challenges today and in the future.

ÂÜÀòÊÓƵ Travel, our recently updated business travel booking tool, offers AI-powered personalization for travelers and extensive options for airlines, hotels, rail, and rental cars. Travelers have choice and flexibility, while businesses can enforce policies, promote sustainability, and see spending before, during, and after it occurs. Using AI, ÂÜÀòÊÓƵ Request provides trip cost estimates, saving employees time planning trips. GPS-enabled Drive is another tool that spares employees hassles, as it automatically and accurately tracks business mileage.

ÂÜÀòÊÓƵ Expense automates the travel and expense report process, capturing spending from business travel bookings, corporate cards, P-cards, and other sources. Purchases smoothly flow into automatically created expense reports instead of requiring employees to input each one by hand. Reimbursements occur more quickly, and the business has a more accurate view of spending. The ExpenseIt solution minimizes another employee chore ¨C gathering and inputting receipts ¨C by snapping pictures of receipts, analyzing and categorizing the information, and then sending it directly to an expense report.

Determining which solution or platform is best for your business is a challenging process. Our Travel management comparison checklist ¨C with over three dozen categories covering capabilities, integration, security, user experience, and more ¨C provides a handy scorecard to assess how ÂÜÀòÊÓƵ Travel measures up.

Amid rising costs, AI innovation, and other travel and expense challenges, ¡°It¡¯s the perfect time for finance and travel teams to optimize their processes. You and your travelers can work smarter not harder, while saving your organization money and improving productivity,¡± says Jason Grunin, Principal Value Experience Consultant at SAP ÂÜÀòÊÓƵ.